Tuesday, 26 January 2016

I've been quite angry the past couple of days and assumed it was because I've just spent a weekend drinking in Germany in the study of a writer with a great line in splenetic outbursts of invective and an impressive armoury. But then I realised it wasn't that at all, it's through reading stuff like this.

Apparently, to succeed (more on that later) vapers should desist from pointing out uncomfortable things like facts to people who clearly have an agenda, and instead simply toe the line. And if you do decide to quote facts, you should be prepared to be "dismissed", know your place Goddamit! Because, you see, vapers should - all of them - have a strategy.

The most disturbing thing about all this, of course, is the subtle shift of language by snobby moralistic anti-enjoyment freaks. It used to be that they despised smoking, so much so that they liberally lobbed out nicotine on the NHS, even to kids without parents' permission and whether they smoked or not. But now, apparently, nicotine is the big baddie because, erm, e-cigs.

Now they have made that decision, vapers are supposed to follow the rules and structure their arguments around what makes 'public health' lunatics feel comfortable.

These aren't mistakes, it is what tobacco control has done for decades. They are the biggest liars on the planet and they are fully aware of what they are doing, what's more they don't care. These people should not be respected and treated with kid gloves, they should be reviled and in an ideal world they belong in prison.

Now, I should say that I like Joe even though I disagree with him on many issues (he still believes the secondhand smoke myth is backed by real science instead of the screaming junk that tobacco control are now proving is their stock-in-trade with e-cigs, for example), but on this issue he seems to have completely misread what vapers are all about.

It's true there are e-cig advocates whose task it is to engage with the liars of tobacco control and get them onside. Indeed they should listen and be polite, but the only reason they are even being entertained by a mendacious industry which routinely ignores anyone, anything, or any research which disagrees with their pre-conceived policy goals is because the immense power of the enthusiastic vaping community forced it to happen.

You see, way back in 2010 e-cigs were set to be banned within 21 days for no reason at all, but the huge weight of responses from vapers headed it off. As I said at the time, they would have loved to have done exactly that but the more people vape, the more problems blinkered prohibitionists have passing totally unjustified laws.

As user numbers swell, government's enforcers in Whitehall are going to find it increasingly difficult to cut off vapers from an alternative to tobacco which offers massive harm reduction potential, without showing themselves up as vested interest stooges (if they haven't already, natch).

Scroll on to 2016 and almost 3 million vapers are difficult to ignore. It's a welcome development, no doubt, but why all vapers should all of a sudden respect the people who tried unsuccessfully to crush vaping and who now still spread lies is baffling.

I really don't know where Joe gets the idea that being nice to them now and having a "strategy" is a good idea when the progress made so far is down to an inadvertent and unorganised twin track approach. Some vapers - the ones who can resist smacking them in the gob - are prepared to sit round a table with people who have in the past advocated e-cigs being banned; being subjected to medical regulation; and who still think the TPD is a great idea. But why should regular vapers stop pointing out the cant and hypocrisy?

So what's Joe's definition of "succeed"? Many vapers have all they need and it wouldn't matter a fig if vaping was banned tomorrow (as it is in Australia where, oddly enough, there are still vapers). So what Joe is effectively saying is that vapers should be nice to tobacco control liars for the good of smokers who might perhaps switch in the future? Erm, why?

Why should they put up with the incessant crap from a disingenuous core of cretinous blowhards when it is supposed to be tobacco control's job to get smokers to quit, not vapers'? It is the tobacco control industry which is actively working against that happening, so it's quite right they should be excoriated for it. Vapers don't need a "strategy" to help people they don't know switch to a safer alternative, tobacco controllers do. That's what they get paid for, for crying out loud.

It's wrong to reward failure, and being nice to a tobacco control liar is basically giving them a green light to be worse. Tobacco control might like to be left alone and 'public health' might be uncomfortable having their ignorant opinions trashed, but why the hell should citizen vapers - many of whom have been accused of being in the pay of corporations, and all of whom have been dismissed as "anecdotes" to be ignored - be nice to incorrigible liars?